Local Humanitarian Leadership and Religious Literacy: Engaging with Religion, Faith, and Faith Actors
Research conducted by Oxfam and the Harvard Divinity School finds much work to be done within the humanitarian sector.
Local humanitarian leadership is built upon the premise that humanitarian action should be led by local humanitarian actors whenever possible, yet this research, conducted with the Harvard Divinity School and with funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, finds that secular humanitarian INGOs do not engage systematically with local faith actors in their local leadership work. Based primarily on interviews with humanitarian INGO staff, this research also found that neither secular nor faith-inspired international humanitarian organizations have a sufficient level of religious literacy to enable them to understand the religious dimensions of the contexts in which they work and to effectively navigate their engagement with local faith actors.